More Benefits Of The Affordable Care Act

by Stuart Shapiro

Most people rightly associate the Affordable Care Act with the policy of expanding insurance coverage to the uninsured.  But it does a lot more.  Last week I posted about the expanded access to pharmaceuticals for seniors.  HHS today described the increased access to clinics.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that the Affordable Care Act will have funded the construction of more than 300 new community health centers by 2014.

Sixty-seven have been completed so far, it said.

Nearly 200 local clinics have also undergone renovations because of the law, and that number will rise to roughly 675 in the next two years, the Department said. . .

An additional 1.3 million patients will have access to community healthcare in the next two years, it said.

If the ACA goes so does the funding for building these clinics and the care for these people.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.